If Sunsoft was hoping to return to the western market with a bang, it’s made some odd choices. Dark Eclipse is not a nostalgic resurrection of some of the Japanese developer’s beloved early Nintendo-era titles (which include Batman on NES and The Death And Return of Superman), but instead an obscure and obtuse multiplayer online battle arena (MOBA), played exclusively within a VR headset no less. I respect the boldness, if nothing else.

Still, Dark Eclipse will no doubt have its fanbase, however small, and it deserves one alone for the thought that’s gone into retooling a genre dominated by mouse and keyboard.

In this free-to-play PSVR exclusive, you fight for control of a map by ordering three leader units (including one main hero and two monsterish support units) to various points and building towers. If you’re a regular to the genre, this is hardly groundbreaking stuff; gather resources to build towers in fixed positions, upgrade units to take down enemy towers and eventually lead an assault on your opponent’s main base whilst they do the same. It’s easy to feel overwhelmed at first (and the game’s tutorial doesn’t do a great deal to help), but the somewhat sluggish pace will at least help you find your feet.

Where Dark Eclipse does innovate, though, is in its distillation of the genre to accommodate PSVR. Playing with a single Move controller (you can also play with a DualShock 4 though it’s a little awkward), you can navigate the game’s relatively small maps with a surprising degree of intuition. Simply hold the Move button and tilt the controller to pan across the map, or hold down a face button and move it up or down to zoom in and out. You get the hang of it in seconds.

Moving units, meanwhile, is done by grabbing a marker above their head and then dragging it to the desired location. Simply tapping other items of interest has selected characters interact with them, too. All of this makes getting around in Dark Eclipse’s world wonderfully light, though it still can’t quite escape the frantic fluster that will have you begging for a mouse in its more demanding moments. Characters do move at a snail’s pace and you can set the view to cover as wide an area as possible, but I still sometimes felt weighed down with the Move controller.

Crucially, the game’s microtransactions are done pretty well, too. From what I can tell, they’re simply for buying new Leaders, though there’s a fair number available from the start. You can earn coins to put towards new unlocks or just buy them from the off as well. It’s likely the best shot the game has at building a community considering how little fanfare it’s launched to.

Interface aside, though, Dark Eclipse is not a game that’s going to win over people unconvinced by MOBAs, and I very much doubt it’ll attract much attention from fans of DOTA 2 and the like. Though it’s mechanically sound and easy enough to follow, I kept

Waiting to get into a match of Firewall Zero Hour should soon be a bit shorter.

First Contact Entertainment today confirmed that Patch 1.03 for the PSVR exclusive shooter is in the “final stages of testing” and should be with us soon. The studio clarified that this update will improve squad matchmaking and “should result in lower wait times overall.”

That’s great to hear considering that the amount of downtime in Firewall is one of our key concerns with the otherwise-excellent game. Whilst matchmaking has had its bugs since launch last month, we’re also anticipating further improvements to the lobby to also keep wait times down. First Contact noted that “feature improvements” to the lobby were indeed in the works, but would be introduced in future updates.

Going forward, First Contact is also committed to delivering weekly updates on the game to fill the community in on what’s happening. Hopefully, this marks the start of a more open approach to the game’s development.

Firewall remains one of our favorite PSVR games of the year, though, and absolutely something you should check out. Going forward, we’d love to see some changes made to the game’s jammer system, which also seems to have some major exploits.

Two big PlayStation VR (PSVR) games were featured at Tokyo Games Show in Japan this year, and we just got our best looks yet at both of them.

The first game is Deracine a new title from Dark Souls developer From Software. First announced at E3 earlier this year, we’ve been looking forward to the game’s return to From’s adventure roots. In the gameplay below, you can see a player exploring incredibly detailed scenes within the game’s boarding school setting. Time appears to have slowed to a halt and the player is able to pick up items and inspect them as well as observe what characters are doing. We get a bit of an Invisible Hours vibe from it.

The other title, Everbody’s Golf VR, was actually announced just before TGS, though we’d been dreaming of it for a long time. The first entry in Sony’s popular golf series to support VR, it takes on a much more realistic look than its predecessors and uses a PlayStation Move controller to let you swing your club.

Deracine is due to arrive on PSVR on November 6th, whilst Everybody’s Golf VR hasn’t yet been confirmed for the west, though we’d be surprised if it didn’t come over too.

Oculus Go headsets will soon be joining Rifts in rolling out to hospitals and homes in an effort to use VR to manage patient pain and anxieties.

VR wellness company VRHealth today announced a partnership with Oculus that will see the latter’s hardware roll out to sites across the US running the former’s software. At the Oculus Connect 5 developer conference in San Jose, VRHealth will launch three pre-orders as part of the partnership.

The first is a pain management platform on Go designed for use during chemotherapy and other treatments. It includes several different activities for distraction along with visual imagery to “alter pain perception”. The hope is that the experiences provided in the platform can help patients forget about discomforts caused by their treatment. Several plans for the platform are available, each coming with a Go headset and a tablet that others can use to gather data. VRHealth also provides analytical tools that can be used to help improve treatments in the future. Plans start with a $699 payment for the Go and tablet and then range from $89 a month up to $449 a month and beyond for enterprise cases.

The second platform also helps manage pain, though is designed for home use on Go with subscriptions starting at $5 a month. Finally, another Go app focuses on wellness, incorporating brain health exercises and meditation. It tracks the user’s performance and even allows them to compare results with their friends. Oculus is assisting the company with the delivery of these platforms via its Oculus for Business program.

Rift, meanwhile has already been deployed at 30 locations across the US, running a platform for rehabilitation.

What better way to forget the experience of a coach passenger than to don a VR headset in first class and watch Ready Player One in 3D?

That’s the pilot project being tested by Alaska Airlines with a basic VR headset built only for 3D and 360-degree movie viewing. The service is called “Allosky Cinematic VR” from a company called SkyLights and it is being tested as a first class amenity on-board Seattle-Boston and Boston-San Diego routes.

What’s interesting to me is the use of specialized hardware here instead of, say, an Oculus Go or Gear VR. Instead, this is a headset purpose-built for 3D movies and 180-degree or 360-degree VR films. I fully expect some comments on this article to argue whether you can have a “VR experience” in this kind of system at all.

The headset is said to offer “a selection of 2D and 3D blockbusters” including “Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, Spielberg’s Ready Player One in 3D, and Ferdinand for the kids.” It also comes preloaded with some 360-degree films.

The Darth Vader VR experience that we first heard about two years ago from ILMxLAB looks like it might get a formal reveal at Oculus Connect 5.

A tweet from ILMxLAB’s official account says to look for updates on September 26, which just happens to coincide with the start of Oculus Connect 5 in San Jose, California.

Alert all commands. pic.twitter.com/ZJc4yEUb4W

— ILMxLAB (@ILMxLAB) September 25, 2018

We’ll note also the official Viveport account replied to the message in a playful way, suggesting this is unlikely to be a release exclusive to the Oculus Store. Here’s the teaser we saw for the experience that was shown in 2016 during a panel.

The writer, David S. Goyer, teased it would be done within “a year or two.”

AR fluorescent can help provide surgeons with clearer view during vascular neurosurgery. *WARNING: The following photos are NOT for the faint of heart * Using a combination of AR technology and ICG, otherwise known as Indocyanine Green, Leica Microsystems, one of the leading manufacturers of optical microscopes and microscope equipment, has developed GLOW800, an exciting